Other forms: quaffing
To quaff is to drink deeply and with enjoyment. Quaff a pint, quaffing wine, quaff it down.
It is cheerful and slightly archaic, and it belongs to feasts and fiction rather than to real bars. Wine writers use quaffable to mean pleasant and undemanding, which is faint praise. The origin of the word is unknown.
1verbquaffTo drink deeply and with enjoyment.
“The Vikings in the film quaffed ale from huge horns at the feast.”
quaff is a way of drinking.
The origin is unknown. A connection with an Old Irish word for a cup has been suggested but not settled.
Old Irish
cuäch — cup, goblet, bowl; cauldron, large vessel; bowl, cup
English, today
quaff
unknown. Suggestions include connection with Old Irish cuäch (“cup, goblet, bowl; cauldron, large vessel; bowl, cup”) (whence Scots quaich, queff). The noun is derived from the verb.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire